Christmas Scavenger Hunt Clues

Christmas is always a great time to organize fun youth events, so here are some free Christmas scavenger hunt clues for you to use with your youth group.

This Christmas photo scavenger hunt is great fun. It can take up to 2 hours, or more if you also show the pictures afterwards. You split youth into teams and send them out into a public space with a time limit to capture as many photos as they can of ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’.

They should use their imaginations and not look for the obvious, like a real partridge in a real pear tree. We had a team that took 2 books with trees on the cover and put an Alan Partridge DVD in the middle of them and snapped a pic – a ‘Partridge’ in a ‘pair of’ trees – brilliant! Give points for creativity.

At the end, the group comes back together with their photos and watches them together. You score the photos and give prizes (optional) to the winners! And really, it’s so much fun, everybody wins!

You can do this 12 Days Of Christmas scavenger hunt as a photo or video scavenger hunt. You can use a digital camera or just cellphones, and since there are 1.8 billion youth cell phone accounts worldwide, chances are you have 1 or 2 in your youth program.

Your youth can earn extra points for creativity, for including a kind passer-by and anything else you want to give bonus points for. You could also make this a mini-media project by having the groups put their pictures into slide shows and caption them.

Resources

1 copy of the scorecard per team (this is for you to score them – don’t give the scorecards to the youth)

Instructions

Go to a mall, town center shopping area or high street.

Divide the youth up into teams and send one or two adult youth workers or volunteers with each group. If your youth are old enough they could go by themselves, but we used it as a good time for building relationships with the youth.

Give each team a list of the 12 Days of Christmas scavenger hunt clues. Encourage creativity and humor! In the UK, we had one group doing ‘4 Calling Birds’ as 4 girls talking on their cell phones (Englishism: ‘birds’ are girls or women) and ‘7 Swans-a-swimming’ where they took a photo of 7 ‘Swan matches’ floating in a puddle.

Remind them of any group agreements you have about behavior in public, or come up with a few on the spot. You may also want to establish ground rules about buying things for the photos. Decide ahead of time if groups are allowed to purchase items for the pictures. Consider giving them $5 each for incidentals if buying is OK, so that all teams have a level playing field.

Give them their time limit and meeting location and send them off.

Winners

The team with the most points at the end wins!

Important Note: In many shopping centers, it’s not OK to take photos inside stores or have groups of youth hanging out. One thing you can do is be proactive and contact the mall ahead of time to discuss the particulars of your hunt. This will help foster a good relationship in your community and promote a positive image for youth.

If you want to use the pictures for anything but internal use, you’ll also need to have Photo Release Forms completed.
If you’re looking for other things to do with your youth this holiday season, check out the 12 WAYS of Christmas about youth volunteering and fundraising during the holidays.

Comments

A great idea! We always gave the students a list of goofy pictures they had to take, which later on made for some great videos and slide shows. If your local mall gives you too many restrictions about where you can take pictures, you can also divide into teams and go to homes and other places in the community to get your pictures. That method also gives the youth a chance to bond with an adult driver. Thanks for encouraging and equipping youth pastors! Blessings to you, and Merry Christmas!